Greg and I are in southern California, getting ready for a big trip that ought to result in some good travel blogging, I hope. We take off on Wednesday for Vancouver, and I’ll fill in more later on. But till then we’re just kicking back, checking in with some family and friends and trying to adjust to the different time zone. We’re also eating too much, because southern California has “opportunities” that I can’t resist. (SoCal friends, be prepared to cry: Missouri doesn’t have any ClaimJumper restaurants and hardly any Del Taco, only Taco Bell. I know! It’s like living on the moon or something!) So this morning, I got myself into some floppy clothes and went to the gym. It felt great, and with my mind free to wander with a few less pressing e-mails and trans fats to interrupt, I eventually found a bigger point out of it all.

That point could well have been how much I’m missing out by going to the gym in my little hometown. It’s a friendly place, to be sure, and you’re always likely to take home a little of the fitness instructor’s freely dispensed philosophical offerings along with your healthy glow, but the machines in that gym are probably 20 years old and have the kind of character that can only come from that much mileage. What they don’t have are all the whizbang gadgets displayed on the screen of the elliptical trainer I climbed onto. The view out the window wasn’t particularly good, so while I started chugging away, I slowly visited all the possible features open to me in the pursuit of my targeted workout.

Once I settled on something I could understand, I settled into my rhythm and tried to just clear my head, but it was a little hard to do that. There was a TV set on behind me and it drew my attention with such snippets as I could make out: “dangerous” “body temperature” “extremely dangerous” “40-below-zero”. And then finally an interviewee bellowing good-naturedly “I think I hit myself with the hatchet!” Of course. It’s another episode of “The Deadliest Catch,” the documentary show about King Crab fishers that asks the musical question: “Ninety people a year die acquiring Alaskan king crab and the injury rate is 100% — want some extra butter with those crab legs?” (My conscience is clear. I don’t like seafood, and the only ones who die for my burger and fries are the cow and any particularly determined fry cook.)

I try to tune it out by revisiting my machine’s screen and find that I had missed a button: TV on. Yes, I am a child of wonder — the circuit trainer had its own little built-in TV that I could watch while I work off last night’s debauchery. Trying to get the hang of channel-flipping without losing my pace is tricky, but soon I’m watching a news program without the sound on. I suppose it’s for occasions like this that the kindly news media started the practice of having things to read at the bottom of the screen. This time I’m looking at a shaggy-haired guy that looks familiar. “Churchill will find out today whether he’s fired” reads the caption. Ohhh, yeah. The University of Colorado professor who wrote an essay in which he called the 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns.”
I find that I really don’t need the sound on. There’s archived footage of him walking places, being on stage. They cut to an interview with a faculty member and a lawyer. No doubt they’re courageously espousing a viewpoint that the media will love to hear: that a person gets to be a total jerk in this country, and if he’s someone who is doing his best to educate young people in how to be just as big a jerk as he is, he’s a hero and we should all think that he’s brave and clever, not just mindlessly provocative, egotistical and heartless.
Time to change the channel.

On other networks, we’ve got ads aplenty, but finally I outlast them and make it onto another actual program while I start to work up a sweat. (Behind me, the episode of “The Deadliest Catch” has ended and gone directly into another episode. What is it with that show?) I can’t make out much of what’s going on with the program on my little screen. We have footage of some town, a certain bar or restaurant, and some photos of different people. Then we have mugshots, a slo-mo perp walk and photos of someone that looks like a nice person.

Nope, not watching that, even with the sound down. Especially with the sound down. No crime dramas. Seen enough of them. They never change.
And besides, my time’s up. I get off the circuit trainer and start in on some other machines. Some of them I can’t really figure out, and am only spared the embarrassment and possible injury of trying to goof around with them by watching other fitness-seekers. As we work our way from machine to machine, sometimes we exchange brief greetings or a quick smile. When I saw a man reach into a compartment and take out a slightly refrigerated, slightly damp clean towel, I wanted to exchange a major hug. I didn’t know those were there, and that’s something our gym at home definitely doesn’t have.

I eventually felt like I was as healthy as I was going to get without dropping dead and climbed onto a treadmill to begin a cool-down. Another complicated screen, another built-in TV, but this time I leave it off and just walk, which feels good. The view out the window here isn’t any better than it was from the elliptical trainer.
Since, to my great surprise, working out has become part of my routine for a couple years, I’m used to the way this feels. I don’t look in the many mirrors — way too many mirrors — that gyms have, but I can feel where I am. When I first start with my workout, I feel great for a minute or two, and then there’s a period of adjustment during which my body figures out that I’m doing work. For a while after that there’s resistance and I might go through a part where I feel tired. But then I get on the other side of it and cross over into the place where I can go the rest of the way. Whatever conversing and mental busyness occurred before tends to end here. My fellow exercisers aren’t talking to me or I to them — we’ve all been doing this too long now and we’re past that point. We’ve gone inside for a while.

I look down at my screen for a minute while I start to slow up and bring down the incline. I still don’t have the TV on. No Ward Churchill, no infomercials, no crime dramas. I’m on the other side of that — I’m past where you think about those things. Because I’ve finally gotten to the real work of the work-out.

It occurs to me how obsessed our culture is right now with reporting on itself, with talking and giving opinions and provoking opinions. We detail crimes and salacious current events over and over, because it seems like there’s just something buried in all this that we HAVE to know, we HAVE to get to the bottom of. Things are just going you-know-where in a handbasket and we’ve GOT to keep tuning in and arguing about it.

And up to a point, there may be some value to that, but I wonder if we’ll ever get to the other side of it. Just the same way that in both very good and very bad marriages you get beyond the point of talking about your relationship, we may find ourselves in that place where the work really begins and we find out whether we have real strength, real grit or only the ability to argue, to gather in information without ever intending to take an action or make a decision.

Maybe that’s just the kind of thing you wonder on a treadmill when you’re just about done. Maybe there wasn’t enough blood going to my brain. But it seemed interesting at the time. So I promised myself I’d get it down in writing.

Of course, I also promised myself that I would stay away from Del Taco’s crinkle-cut fries today. So we know what treadmill promises are worth.